


Tongue-Tied

by Minutia_R



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Kissing, Language Barrier, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7808377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Learning languages has never been easy for Emil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tongue-Tied

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).



Tuuri is busy. Her face is scrunched up in concentration as she scribbles something in the margin of her map—which is good. Maybe Emil can get a quick answer without having to answer any questions himself. “How do I say ‘may I’ in Finnish?” he says.

“May you what?” says Tuuri, still scribbling.

So much for that idea. Emil kicks idly at the corner of her desk. “Just—in general. If I want to know if something’s okay.”

He knows his face is red, and that it gets redder when she looks up at him finally and laughs. “Don’t want too many words to remember? Makes sense. Saanko.”

It takes Emil a few seconds to realize that the last thing she said was the word he was asking for. By the time his brain and mouth have both caught up, and he tries to repeat it after her, she’s already lost patience. Her hand darts out and grabs his, and she uses the same felt-tip pen she was scribbling on the map with to write the word across the back of his hand in big block capitals. It feels weird. Ticklish. She drops his hand before he can pull it away.

“There,” she says. “Now you won’t forget.”

“I won’t _forget,_ ” he says.

Emil has forgotten about the word written on his hand by the time he gets back to the tank in the afternoon. He only remembers when he takes off his gloves and sees the big block capitals staring back at him, a little smudged but still legible.

The sight of them makes him feel stupid. It’s not like he can consult his hand anyway out in the field, or in the dark. He should wash it off. Obviously he’s going to wash it off, he’s going through decontamination. Before he does, he reads it again, his lips forming the word—

Lalli is reading over Emil’s shoulder. He looks at Emil’s hand, then he looks at Emil’s face, and he tilts his head curiously and raises his eyebrows.

Emil is going to spontaneously combust, and he doesn’t even know if it’s from lust or embarrassment.

  


In the dark, Emil feels Lalli settle onto his bunk, and he reaches out for him hesitantly. He never knows what’s allowed, with Lalli. On previous nights, he’s gotten an elbow in the ribs for his troubles, bites and scratches. Not that Emil would mind—especially not the bites—except that Lalli really does seem to mean them as warnings and not foreplay. But as often as Lalli has left Emil alone and convinced that this is the time that he’s ruined everything with his clumsy eagerness, he always comes back. So he must want it—maybe not as much as Emil does, but enough—there must be some way they can make it work.

Lalli is so close. He could hardly be anything else, in the narrow bunks in the tank. Emil can feel his breath on his face, and he wants badly to kiss him, but before he does, he says, “Sa—”

The rest of the word slips away into the night, invisible, irretrievable.

Lalli doesn’t laugh like Tuuri did, or like the other students in his Remedial Icelandic class, when it was Emil’s turn to recite and the words he’d spent hours trying to force into his brain abandoned him, and he opened his mouth and nothing came out.

Lalli brushes the hair away from Emil’s face, puts his lips against his ear, and whispers, “Saanko.” And then in Swedish: “Yes.”

Emil doesn’t need any more invitation to turn his head and fit his mouth against Lalli’s, bracing himself for bites that don’t come. Instead, Lalli licks gently into his mouth, exploring with his tongue, as if he can find all the words that Emil has never managed to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Rusakko for saving me from embarrassing language-related mistakes, and for pointing out that the verb "saada" (which "saanko" is a form of) can also be used to specifically refer to getting sex. Let's just assume that that wasn't Tuuri's intention when she taught it to Emil, shall we?


End file.
